Second life becomes real life

Wired has an interesting article on this:

“The virtual designer creates a three-dimensional model of a client’s avatar using screenshots taken in the world of Second Life. He uses an open-source design tool known as the OpenGLExtractor by Eyebeam OpenLab. After tweaking the model to make sure that there are no overly fragile parts — hair has been a big worry — Buckbee sends the design to the client for final approval. The digital file is then turned into reality using a 3-D printer made by Z Corp”

Basically means that Second Life freaks can bring their virtual world items live by “3D printing” them. Neat and bizarre. What will the future on this be – will the monsters and horrors of games extend out of game consoles. Will the toy industry merge with printing industry? When will the plastic printers enter mass markets…. what do you think?

Rabbit Media

Originally for Satama Research Blog

No longer one needs to be stuck with a computer to obtain updates of blogs and messaging tools. New innovation called Nabaztag promises the following:

Nabaztag is a desktop companion that utilises WiFi technology to fetch information from the Internet and convey it in various charming ways.

The gadget has been available at Schiphol for few months, but now it entered also Finland. Pricing ~100 euros.

Thus, Ambient Orb has now a more lively competitor. This may sping out more of similar internet media extensions. Why should media look like TV, newspaper or computer when it can be more personal…

What do you think – is this a toy or something that has potential?

Measuring advertising exposure in video networks

(Originally for Satama Research Blog)

Huh, what a title…

Anyway, yesterday’s article from ClickZ made a very interesting point on consumers exposure to ad spots online.

Traditional advertising is now entertainment, just as much as any other piece of video. Type in a search for “commercials” at YouTube. At publication time, there were 44,110 results. The most viewed commercial, for Sony Bravia, has over 3.5 million views. Look at the comments; they illustrate the level of engagement. Impressive.

Try e.g. this YouTube search. You will see that the most watched commericals are by Sony, Volkswagen and Apple. This tells something about the the dominance of these global brands.

Commercials become entertainment – neat. Thus, what will this mean for marketing? Entertainment becomes marketing? Maybe.

Google enters the B2B domain

Google Apps on your domain is Google’s latest approach to offer tools inside companies. They already offer Google Mini to have company-wide search. Now the new program brings e-mail (Gmail), IM+Voip (GoogleTalk), calender (Google Calender) and web editing (PageCreator) to usage of any company.

Now you can offer private-labeled email, IM and calendar tools to all of your users for free*, so they can share ideas and get things done more effectively. You can design and publish your organization’s website, too. It’s all hosted by Google, so there’s no hardware or software for you to install or maintain.

Image Search 2.0

(Originally for Satama Research Blog)

Google Image Search must be familiar to all of us bloggers. Yet, something that I think this great tool does not have is capability to find similar images to another. Thus, I took few minutes to explore that possibilities there are to find images that match another image with other tools beyond Google.

Great starting point for the exploration is Yahoo’s directory. It had a great list of search tools anyone can use in the similar tasks to me. Out of the list popped out the following.

Tiltomo: -playing on Flickr databases and finding similar photos
Retrivr: shape drawing tool based on Flickr
Montage Maker: Create a montage of similar images, not totally similar, but fancy tool anyway, see e.g. trial on ex-Finnish president Kekkonen

I think these tools open interesting possiblities for designers. Think about it – if your image is just not ok, why not to put on Flickr and seek for similar ones which look nearly the same. What a visual exploration journey…

Do you think this would interest you? Do you think this kind of tools would be good for creating e.g. moodboards etc.?

P.S. Remember the web 2.0 classic – Flickr Tag Browser. It is very similar to this thinking…

UK leads, Finland second, NL sixth

Originally for Satama Research Blog

Informa Media & Telecom’s recent research ranks European countries by theis usage of digital media.

“The UK is by far Western Europe’s most digital market and its surprising number one ranking is due to the huge take-up of digital TV, the sector now boasts a base of almost 17 million users.”, states Informa.

Do you agree? Do see your country (Finland, Netherlands, Germany) to be in the right position.
If so/if not – why so? Comments?

Search more important than navigation?

(Originally for Satama Research Blog)

What a fascinating design topic.

Are we as online users getting so lasy, that we no longer want to navigate on sites. Do we just want to get the latest site updates as RSS feeds for “data storages” and google the rest? What it the benefit of good online design anymore in the dawning age of searchbots and 3rd generation information agent software. Read what experts think about this topic on this from here and here.

For me, this kind of new world means basically that we, as design company, will need to invest more and more to search engine optimisation. Not a single site should leave any longer a digital media firm without being optimised to search engines. This is a quality issue. With tools such as WebCEO any competitor of a digital media company can scan this signiifcant quality issue of our sites (and we also theirs!). Would you like to be communicated by the client that your design and code does not work? And that our competitors would report our customers this? Would not be good. Let’s start ensuring this in here – NOW!

Streaming media in the Media Center Age

This article was originally written for Satama Voice.

Ever since Real Networks came to marketing in mid 1990s, tech-savvy people have been eagerly exploring the possiblities of streaming media content through the internet. It all started with radio and sports (and adult stuff). Yet over the past year the introduction of media centers and home streamers (e.g. Streamium, Kiss Technology, MS Mediacenters etc.), IPTV and recordable PVR with an internet connection, have changed the situation dramatically. It’s now possible to access streams not only through PC, but also with a modern set-top-box connected to the livingroom telly.

Virtualise yourself

Originally written to Satama Resarch Blog

In end of 1990’s one of the leading dotcom’s was Boo.com. One of their original business ideas was to create virtual models of yourself and thus be able to buy the clothes that woud exactly fit you. Moreover, it was targeted allow to you profile holders to try out these clothes in a virtual dress room. 1990s was all about internet via modems – thus no way of succeeding…

P2P to the next level

(Originally for Satama Research Blog)

Though the movie, software and record industries are fighting to gain control over ever growing P2P traffic there is no stopping of development in this phenomena. Few very interesting innovations are popping up in here:

1) The LamaBox

The LamaBox is an intelligent mediaplayer, connectable to the internet. The player is special because it’s fully integrated with the internet, including connection to the big Peer-to-Peer networks*. Choose from an impressive collection of audio and video. The latest movies and televisionshows, playable on your television at the press of a button. Watch live video- and audiostreams (with time-shifting), top-10 previews of movies in the theatre, the latest weather forecast or watch photo images from your digital camera and share these with friends and family.

Price: 300-500 euros, based on the size of the harddrive. Interested? Order yours online – if you dare

2) AllPeers – Firefox P2P extension

AllPeers is a free extension which combines the strength of Firefox and the efficiency of BitTorrent to transform your favorite browser into a media sharing powerhouse.

Price: free. Coming soon to your FireFox.

So what? Well, I would like to state with this kind of innovation, there is less and less doubt of the victory of P2P networks. Yet, there is the bandwidth challenge. If all would download all the time, would the networks sustain that? Good question. What do you think?